Laudetur Iesus Christus! Happy Feast of the Epiphany – a feast so special it’s one of the feast that has its own liturgical season, like Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost. To learn more please read about it by reading The Liturgical Year, by Dom Prosper Gueranger, courtesy of Sensus Fidelium:
Epiphany Latin Mass tonight Monday January 6: Just a reminder tonight at 6pm St. Ann parish (3635 Park Road, Charlotte) will offer a special High Mass for this great feast day. You will also be able to pick up Epiphany Home blessing kits (chalk, salt). There is Epiphany Holy Water now available if you want to bring an empty bottle (while quantities last).
After Mass we will celebrate with some Rosca de Reyes, a kings cake, a widely popular Epiphany custom in Hispanic countries.
Kings Feast – from the Liturgical Year (see link above):
There was another custom, which originated in the Ages of Faith, and which is still observed in many countries. In honour of the Three Kings, who came from the East to adore the Babe of Bethlehem, each family chose one of its members to be King. The choice was thus made. The family kept a feast, which was an allusion to the third of the Epiphany-Mysteries – the Feast of Cana in Galilee – a Cake was served up, and he who took the piece which had a certain secret mark, was proclaimed the King of the day. Two portions of the cake were reserved for the poor, in whom honour was thus paid to the Infant Jesus and his Blessed Mother; for, on this Day of the triumph of Him, who, though King, was humble and poor, it was fitting that the poor should have a share in the general joy. The happiness of home was here, as in so many other instances, blended with the sacredness of Religion. This custom of King’s Feast brought relations and friends together, and encouraged feelings of kindness and charity. Human weakness would sometimes, perhaps, show itself during these hours of holiday-making; but the idea and sentiment and spirit of the whole feast was profoundly Catholic, and that was sufficient guarantee to innocence.
King’s Feast is still a Christmas joy in thousands of families; and happy those where it is kept in the Christian spirit which first originated it!
Charlotte Latin Mass Community 